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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668921">and i can go anywhere i want (anywhere i want just not home)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambuli/pseuds/tambuli'>tambuli</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>poetry au [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cigarettes, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Poetry, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Smoking, Underage Smoking, Unethical Experimentation, Unethical Medicine, Warning: Trent Ikithon, Whump, in a very unsexy manner, when I put that self-harm tag i WAS NOT KIDDING, yeah I'm quite glad that trent ikithon is his own warning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:33:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668921</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambuli/pseuds/tambuli</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The headline of the Exandrian Inquirer blazes at him: Trent Ikithon, head of research and development of a huge pharmaceutical agency, Trent Ikithon, formal and distinguished in his suit as he goes down the steps of the courthouse—Trent Ikithon, found not guilty on all counts of developing and supplying dangerous, untested “smart drugs” to young, hungry, brilliant interns—</i>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I am deeply relieved,” Ikithon is quoted, “that justice is served and the truth found out. My company is committed to producing ethical, effective medicines, not whatever travesty of science I have been accused of.”</i>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <i>A short little paragraph at the very end of the article, talking about how Soltryce Sciences was known for giving out internships to young, brilliant students and how many of these former interns were now quite high up in the scientific fields they were in. </i>
</p>
<p>Or: Trent Ikithon is declared not guilty. Caleb Widogast slash Bren Aldric Ermendrud (he is Bren, he is always Bren, Caleb is a life he has stolen) does not take it well.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beauregard Lionett &amp; Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto &amp; Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>poetry au [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940338</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic contains graphic self-harm. This is a very big trigger and I do not want your mental health compromised because of this fic. Please, if you can't handle this, PRESS THE BACK BUTTON AND WALK AWAY.</p>
<p>I wrote this at 4am because I could not sleep from wanting to self-harm, so I made Caleb do it instead. Because doing it to fictional characters is better than doing it to myself. BUT! If this story about a fictional character is going to make you, a real person, hurt yourself, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caleb Widogast is fine, he’s <em>fine, </em>even though it just so happens that he’s found the darkest, most isolated area of Wildemount High campus (a bushy, leafy tangle of shrubs in the very corner of the grounds, flush against a wall in an area nobody goes) and crawled and contorted himself into it.</p>
<p>His hands are trembling (are they really his hands? Is this his body? Is he real?) as he digs into the ground. It’s good earth, crumbly and loamy, and his fingers aren’t very dirty as he pulls out the cigarette box he’d buried in there.</p>
<p>He sits cross-legged within the shadowed leafy tangle, branches crackling and poking into his face, and <em>breathes. </em>The box crinkles in his too-tight grip, and he can feel the lighter he’d stuffed in there too.</p>
<p><em>No, Caleb, </em>he hears his good sense saying, <em>no, no, don’t do it, </em>but. But. These are not his hands and this is not his body and he is not <em>Caleb Widogast, </em>is he? No. No, he’s not.</p>
<p>“My name,” he says out loud, not that there’s anyone to hear him, “my name is Bren Aldric Ermendrud.”</p>
<p><em>And today, </em>he thinks, as he drags out his phone and stares at the article again, <em>today, the man who killed my parents was acquitted. </em></p>
<p>No. That’s not true, is it. The headline of the <strong><em>Exandrian Inquirer</em></strong> blazes at him: Trent Ikithon, head of research and development of a huge pharmaceutical agency, Trent Ikithon, formal and distinguished in his suit as he goes down the steps of the courthouse—Trent Ikithon, found not guilty on all counts of developing and supplying dangerous, untested “smart drugs” to young, hungry, brilliant interns <strike>and encouraging them to have home labs and pushing them to make dangerous explosive chemicals and</strike>—</p>
<p>“I am deeply relieved,” Ikithon is quoted, “that justice is served and the truth found out. My company is committed to producing ethical, effective medicines, not whatever travesty of science I have been accused of.”</p>
<p>A short little paragraph at the very end of the article, talking about how Soltryce Sciences was known for giving out internships to young, brilliant students and how many of these former interns were now quite high up in the scientific fields they were in.</p>
<p>His cellphone lights up, <strong>Beauregard Lionett is calling. </strong>He tosses it aside. The phone continues to vibrate relentlessly on the ground.</p>
<p>Trent Ikithon free, and Bren Aldric Ermendrud free, and Una and Leofric Ermendrud dead in a home explosion caused by their drugged-up, too-brilliant son. No one brought to justice. No one paid the price except for Una and Leofric.</p>
<p>No, no, not true also. So many interns and employees, stuffed to the gills with untested mood-altering drugs with unknown long-term effects. So many breaches of ethics. But no, keep going, keep experimenting, we’re on to something here, <em>sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of science, Bren my boy,</em> and then Astrid with her small frame and sharp angles, dwarfed in her lab coat, <em>I think I’m on to something here! </em>and the blinding glow of her delight at a discovery, and Eadwulf laughing, clapping, his broad frame just barely contained in his lab coat, and Bren sees himself there too, sly-smirking Bren, happy, clever, accepted—</p>
<p><em>No, no, no, no, no. </em>He yanks a cigarette from the box and lights it up. His brain is screaming at him, <em>no, no, no, don’t do it,</em> but he does it anyway. The smoke issues from the cigarette and he takes a deep drag, god, nicotine back in his lungs again. Tears prick at his eyes.</p>
<p>His phone lights up again; he glances at it out of reflex. <strong>Veth the Brave is calling. </strong>He ignores it.</p>
<p>Beauregard in his brain this time: <em>You’ll ruin your lungs, Caleb! You’ll ruin your life! </em>Beau, for all that she seemed like a dumbass meathead, was very into moderation, healthy living, and the <em>purity of body </em>or whatever monk stuff she and Dairon got up to.</p>
<p>“Guess what, Beauregard,” Bren says aloud, teeth clenched around his cigarette. “I’ve already ruined my life.”</p>
<p>Mother and Father, Mom and Dad, a childhood of chemistry sets and science textbooks and Dad getting home from work late but still finding the time to sit down at the kitchen table and listen to him rambling about the beauty of chemistry. Mom giving him the room with the best ventilation for his home lab. Mom in her gardening gloves, holding a bowl of green beans, <em>Bren, can you help me in the garden? <strong>No Mom, not right now, I’m busy. </strong></em></p>
<p>What he’d give to be in the dirt with his mother one more time. What he’d give for sweat dripping down his face and muck on his knees, just so he could see his mother in her sun hat and a trowel in her hands, planting tomatoes.</p>
<p>If only they’d had a son with about twenty less IQ points. If only they’d had a son who struggled with times tables and could not for the life of him remember the periodic table of elements. Why couldn’t he have been something other than he was? Then this would never have happened.</p>
<p>“And even now,” he says aloud, just to hear his own voice, “this dummkopf cannot stay away from his godsbedamned science.”</p>
<p>He sucks in a deep drag and blows it out, watching the smoke furl around his little hiding place. Leylas Kryn instead of Trent Ikithon, medical physics instead of pharmacy. Skin grafts instead of mood-altering drugs. It’s still science. It’s still research. He should be a poet, instead, he should sit at his desk and scratch away in his notebooks, ink curling into words instead of equations. He should atone by putting art into the world, not, not…</p>
<p>The cigarette burns down, just smoldering embers and ash, and Bren looks at the stub.</p>
<p><em>Please, no</em>, all his good sense, Beauregard, Veth, beg him.</p>
<p>He rolls up his soft pants all the way up to the thigh, and presses the burning stub in.</p>
<p><em>God. </em>His breath hisses out through his teeth and tears fall down his cheeks—oh, it burns, it burns, it <em>hurts </em>and he deserves it. He scrambles for another cigarette, lights that one too, and jabs it down onto his skin. Fuck. Yes. There’s a neat little row of cigarette burns down his left thigh and it’s <em>gorgeous, </em>the pain is delicious and he loves it, and he deserves this, and, and—</p>
<p>He takes another drag of his second cigarette and then presses one more burn into his skin. It hurts. It’s perfect. Three new burns, three little circles, one for each year he’s lived as Caleb Widogast in witness protection. Three little circles that will blister and chafe every time he moves for the next week or so.</p>
<p>He laughs, choked and raw and wet with tears. Oh god. Oh Mother. Oh Father. Three circles for the lives he’d ruined, too. He touches the burns, uncaring that there’s soil on his fingers. He presses down, <em>oh, fuck, </em>that hurts too, and he pushes down harder. That’s going to blister. That’s going to scar, and it’s going to be so pretty, he’s going to undress in the shower and sit down on the toilet and lose minutes of his life just staring at them. This is his penance. Trent Ikithon hasn’t been brought to justice and Bren Aldric Ermendrud’s life was snatched out of the jaws of death by FBI agent Dairon Cobalt in exchange for testimony, but. <em>But. </em>This, he can do.</p>
<p>Calm. He feels calm now. No, not calm either: empty. Empty and scraped raw. He thinks about clean burn and how fire can be a metaphor for rebirth. Like the phoenix. Ha. Bren isn’t a phoenix. He’s not anything but a murderer and maybe a cuckoo stealing another boy’s life. Lovely Caleb Widogast who dreams of being a doctor and reads poetry to crying girls over the phone—</p>
<p>His phone vibrates: <strong>Jester Lavorre is calling. </strong>Nine missed calls from Beau, ten missed calls from Veth.</p>
<p>Bren pauses, considers picking up for Jester. His head is clear and he isn’t sobbing anymore, and there’s a comforting throb beneath his skin. He pulls out a third cigarette, lights it up, and watches the phone vibrate.</p>
<p>The call ends, but no more than a split second passes before it vibrates again: <strong>Jester Lavorre is calling. </strong></p>
<p>He picks up.</p>
<p>“Caleb? Caleb! Caleb,” Jester almost yells, before pulling her voice down to strained faux-casual. “Where are you? Beau and Veth are <em>panicking. </em>We haven’t been able to reach you for hours and hours and hours!”</p>
<p>“You are exaggerating,” Bren rasps out, “I’ve only been MIA an hour.” He checks the time on his phone. “Just an hour, ja.”</p>
<p>“Yes, well, when you’ve got Beau shouting in your car, and Veth driving around like a crazy person, <em>you </em>say it’s only been an hour.” Jester laughs, strained. “Where are you? We haven’t been able to find you.”</p>
<p>“Do you even know why they’re looking?” Bren asks, distant and curious.</p>
<p>“Nooooo,” Jester says. “But they were really afraid, so I got scared too.”</p>
<p>“Are you with them at the moment?”</p>
<p>“No, we stopped by Pizza Hut and they’re getting take-out. I’m in the car. No, seriously, where are you?”</p>
<p>“Somewhere safe,” is what Bren settles on.</p>
<p>“Do you…do you want to talk about it?”</p>
<p>“Not really.”</p>
<p> “Do you…maybe want to say it in a poem?”</p>
<p>Bren pauses.</p>
<p>Bren didn’t like poetry. Bren hadn’t had time for poetry, so busy as he was with rocketing to the top of the world, developing the next great drug, whatever it was he dreamed of then. But Caleb…Caleb liked poetry. Caleb liked sitting in his window nook and reading aloud to himself, savoring the taste of the words on his tongue.</p>
<p>“…Maybe,” Caleb says.</p>
<p>Jester waits, her breath coming slow and gentle. Caleb thinks for a moment, but. There’s really only one poem, at this moment, that comes to mind.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/158896962140/i-say-i-say-i-say">I Say, I Say, I Say</a>,” he begins. <em>“Anyone here had a go at themselves / for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists / with a blade in the bath?”</em></p>
<p>Jester sucks in a distressed breath.</p>
<p>Caleb continues, relentless: he knows these words by heart, now.</p>
<p>
  <em>“. . . Those in the dark<br/>
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front<br/>
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,<br/>
let’s show that inch of lacerated skin<br/>
between the forearm and the fist. Let’s tell it<br/>
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark<br/>
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels<br/>
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.<br/>
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.<br/>
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles<br/>
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,<br/>
repeat with me the punch line ‘Just like blood’<br/>
when those at the back rush forward to say<br/>
how a little love goes a long long long way.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>“Caleb,” Jester chokes out, wetly. “Caleb, did you, are you—”</p>
<p>“No,” he assures her. Distant still. A little amused. If only she knew. “No, I promise I do not cut myself. It is just…a very nice poem, is all.”</p>
<p>“But, but Caleb, no one likes that poem, that kind of poem, unless they understand.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps I understand it but I do not do it,” he says, directing, misdirecting, it would be mischievous if it were not done with such a lack of positive feeling. “Maybe I just like how the words sound.”</p>
<p>“Caleb…”</p>
<p>“CALEB?” he hears Veth yell. “He picked up? He finally picked up?” There’s a clattering and the click of the car doors open and then Beau is snatching the phone from Jester and yelling, “You dumbfuck, where are you, where are you, are you all right—”</p>
<p>“I am safe,” he tells her, and then ends the call.</p>
<p>His phone lights up <em>immediately, </em>buzzing like an angry bee, <strong>Beauregard Lionett is calling. </strong>He disregards it, leaning back against the wall and hearing the poor shrubs’ branches crack beneath his weight.</p>
<p>He finishes the cigarette, stubbing it out on the ground instead of his skin. He’s fine. It’s fine. His fingers dig into the loose earth again, and he crams the cigarette box and the lighter into the hole<em> (Mother with her hands in the dirt, Mother attempting to grow a lemon tree—), </em>covers it up again, and then leaves his little hiding place.</p>
<p>He walks back to Dairon’s house. Where else can he go?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Does anyone have any tips for writing people with she/they pronouns? I've been doing the thing they do on the show, where they refer to Dairon by both she and they, but I wonder if people will have trouble grasping that I'm talking about Dairon even as I switch from she to they and vice versa.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dairon is at home when he gets back. They look up with a snap of their head, and Caleb reads worry, exhaustion, and sheer fucking <em>guilt </em>in those dark eyes.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, raising a hand.</p><p>“Caleb,” she says, the word a rush of relief. “Beau called, she said they could not find you.”</p><p>“Yes, well…”</p><p>She stands up and walks near him, asking with her eyes if she can touch him. He doesn’t move, so she puts one hand on his shoulder and says, achingly sad: “Caleb, I am <em>so sorry.</em>”</p><p>“I know,” he says. Does not shrug the hand away. “I know you tried, Dairon. I know.”</p><p>She did. He knows that. Too many days he’s woken up and Dairon was rushing out the door, their head unshaved for the nth day in a row; too many nights he’d been up doing homework and Dairon’s car would pull in, too late at night. Dairon <em>tried</em>, Dairon was still trying, Dairon had taken in Beauregard (the best decision she ever made, Caleb thinks) and raised her into a good woman; Dairon had taken in Bren and made him Caleb, and the jury was still out on whether that was a good idea at all.</p><p>The jury was not out on Trent Ikithon, though. Trent Ikithon was free. Caleb’s breath hitches at the thought.</p><p>He reaches for the throb of the burns on his left thigh, and feels himself relax.</p><p>“There are still…things that can be done, Caleb, do not worry,” Dairon says. Oh, she’s still talking. “Beauregard suggested that if all else fails, we try to get him on tax evasion. He has certainly done enough dodging of that.”</p><p>Tax evasion. Trent Ikithon had drugged up students and then made them do unsafe experiments, and he was going to be brought down on tax evasion charges. The thought would have made Caleb laugh, if Caleb was capable of laughter at all.</p><p>“But I will not stop pushing for the opening of more cases against him,” Dairon promises, her hand still heavy on his shoulder. “We will barrage him with cases. We are going to keep trying, Caleb.”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>“What would you like to eat for dinner tonight?”</p><p>“Ah—I am not hungry, Dairon, thank you.”</p><p>Dairon’s brow wrinkles. “I’ll…bake something,” they say.</p><p>“I have homework,” Caleb says, but before he can flee upstairs the door bangs open and Beau pounces in.</p><p>“FUCKER,” she greets him, “what the fuck, Caleb, I thought—” She drags him into a bone-crushing, rib-cracking hug. “What the fuck. Hey. Hey. Where’d you go? You all right?”</p><p>“I am…about as well as can be expected,” is what Caleb settles on. His foster sister scrutinizes him with too-intelligent blue eyes.  “I had a walk by myself. Clear the head and all.”</p><p>Beau scowls, and hugs him again. He’s stiff in her arms. Dairon murmurs something, and Beau nods; their foster parent slips away to the kitchen.</p><p>“You smell like cigarettes,” she says, half-accusingly. “You had a smoke. Those things will kill you, Caleb.”</p><p><em>Not if I do it first</em>, he almost ripostes, but no, Caleb Widogast—Bren Ermendrud—is many things, but not suicidal. <strike>Not yet. </strike>“I think after the day I have had, I deserve a little leeway from my sister, whom I did not know was my keeper.”</p><p>“Someone’s got to keep you,” Beau says, tugging at his hair, “and Veth had to go home real fast so it’s gonna be me. And I mean, yeah, you’re right, you can have a smoke, go ahead and do that, it’s <em>chill</em>, but like. Take care, all right. You’re going to revolutionize modern medical physics or something, and it would be <em>so embarrassing </em>if your Wikipedia page reads <em>died of lung cancer at 69.</em>”</p><p>“Not a bad age to go,” he says reflectively. She shoves him.</p><p>“Go take a shower, stinky.”</p><p>“Is this what sisters are supposed to be? No wonder I was an only child,” he retorts, and then flinches back from the too-sharp jab.</p><p>
  <strike>His parents were well into middle age when they died, but. They could have tried again. They could have had another child. He thinks Father would have liked that. A little girl named Emilie, perhaps.</strike>
</p><p>Beau reads the emotion in his face, and yanks him in close again. “Come on, fucker,” she says, “give us a hug. You know how to do it, I taught you a while ago. Come on.”</p><p>Slowly, carefully, he puts his arms around her, and rests his head on her shoulders for a sec.</p><p>“There we go,” she murmurs, soft, “there we go.”</p><p>He releases her, and flees to his bedroom.</p><p>In the words of Beauregard, “Dairon made <em>bank,</em>” even though their tastes were almost monkish in their simplicity, so the house was large. Caleb’s room here was larger than Bren’s had been, and it had an adjoining bathroom. He casts a glance across it.</p><p>As usual, he draws a comparison to Bren’s life and Caleb’s life: Bren’s room had been plain, a giant whiteboard taking up one wall, formulae scribbled all over it. The dominating feature had been the desk with the three-monitor setup, for all the data he processed about his multiple experiments. The bed was a mere afterthought, a plain single with plain sheets, but the pillowcases had been silly novelty ones with chemistry puns printed across them.</p><p>Caleb’s room is larger, half a wall taken up by a window; his desk is across the room, multiple notebooks filed neatly on the little shelf above it. His bed is a double now, with amber sheets and a thick duvet. The silly novelty chemistry pillowcases had not survived the explosion, nor had he wanted any, but Veth had had home economics last year and had dumped all her practice embroidery pieces on him. Right now, his pillowcases are medium-good attempts at embroidered flowers.</p><p>Beside his bed, hanging from the ceiling, is a length of twine clipped with photographs of him and his friends. Veth sitting on his shoulders, Beau in full lacrosse gear fake-punching him. There’s last year’s yearbook picture, not because he had any real feeling about last year’s class but because Veth had made him do it. Holiday photos with him and Dairon and Beau, him the sole pasty white boy in the middle of their laughing brown faces. They’re standing in the snow in front of the house, and <em>he’s </em>bundled up in coat and scarf and mittens while the other two are in crop tops and sweatpants.</p><p>
  <strike>(Bren hadn’t had family photos in his room. His parents had put them all up in the living room. It hadn’t mattered to him then. And now he regrets not having them at all.)</strike>
</p><p>
  <strike>(There are some, on his old Facebook page. He’s sure that if he went trawling through the internet, he could find some. But. Witness protection. He can’t. <em>He can’t.</em>)</strike>
</p><p>He goes to his cabinet, lays out sleep clothes, and goes to shower.</p><p>He turns it up to scalding, because of course he does; he tips his face up to the water and lets it almost burn his thin skin. The water trickles down his body and to his thighs; he lets it. The burns sting, because of course they do, that’s what he wanted anyway, and he remembers that line in the Simon Armitage poem: <em>a crimson tidemark / round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels / washed a dozen times, still pink</em>. And on Tumblr, in the self-harm tag, that one girl saying <em>it stings in the shower and if you know what that means I’m so sorry. </em> </p><p>He towels off roughly, opens the door, and <em>yelps. </em></p><p>“Veth! What are you DOING here?!”</p><p>His best friend Veth Johnson is lounging on his bed, shoes kicked off and comfortably snuggled in. His window is hanging wide open.</p><p>“Checking up on you,” she says, as if it was obvious. “You wouldn’t answer my calls, Cay-cay.”</p><p>“Veth, I am <em>not dressed.</em>”</p><p>“Then dress,” Veth says, imperiously, and tosses his shirt at him.</p><p>Helpless, as always, in the face of the females who have barged into his life and made it better, he obeys.</p><p>When he’s done, he sits on his desk chair, staring at Veth. Veth bounces over and sits on his lap. She pulls up his wrists and forearms to check.</p><p>Callused archer’s fingers skim across perfect, unblemished white skin.</p><p>“I was worried,” she says, softly. “Jester was worried, earlier, she asked if I’d check on you.”</p><p>“Jester’s nice,” he says faintly.</p><p>“Yeah, she is.” Veth leans back into him, uncaring that his hair is dripping onto her yellow sweater. “Wanna talk about it?”</p><p>“Not really.”</p><p>“Want to read poetry by dead men at me for a bit?”</p><p><em>That’s a Jester thing</em>, he almost says, but no, it’s not really. He’d been doing it to Veth and Beau long before Jester, he just hasn’t done it <em>since</em> Jester. “Ah. No, not really.”</p><p>Veth shifts a little, trying to get more comfortable, and Caleb jerks as the cloth of his sweatpants drags across the new burns. He must hiss out an <em>ow</em> or something, because then Veth is flipping off him and saying, “Shit, sorry. Was that a dick thing? Sorry, sorry!”</p><p>“Not—not a dick thing,” he manages out, and then Veth’s brown eyes narrow and she looks down at his pants.</p><p>“If it’s not a dick thing,” she says slowly, and he can see the synapses firing in her brain. “Holy shit. Caleb, take your pants off.”</p><p>“<em>Veth!</em>”</p><p>“You can keep your briefs on or something,” she dismisses, “I just wanna check.”</p><p>“Check what?” he asks, trying desperately to misdirect.</p><p>“If you cut your thighs instead of your wrists so you can hide them easier.”</p><p>Shit. Why is Veth so goddamned <em>smart. </em>Holy shit. His best friend is like, less than five feet tall and braids her hair in the same two pigtails she’d had since she was six (he’s seen photos at the Johnson house), but she’s sharp as a tack and twice as terrifying.</p><p>“I promise you I didn’t cut,” he says. She narrows her eyes.</p><p>“That’s extremely precise wording there, Cay-cay,” she says.</p><p>He throws his hands up. “What do you <em>want </em>from me, Veth?!”</p><p>She deflates, and moves over to him, taking his large hand in her small one. “Sorry,” she says, “sorry, sorry, that was pushy.”</p><p>“I—” What an <em>asshole </em>he’s being to someone who’s only ever had his best interests at heart. Veth Johnson, small and brilliant and perfect, the best friend he’s ever had, showing up in his life on the first day at Wildemount High, immediately seeing his discomfort, and dragging him to a quiet lunch table. “Veth. I.”</p><p>She waits.</p><p>“I did not cut,” he says weakly. “But I. Hm. I.”</p><p>She waits.</p><p>“There are,” he says, “o-other ways. Of self-harming. That do not require a blade.”</p><p>He closes his eyes; he can’t look at her. Veth puts her two hands on his cheeks and leans to touch her forehead to his.</p><p>“Cay,” she says, soft-so-soft, “can I take your pants off?”</p><p>He chokes on the laughter. “You are in love with Yeza Brenatto.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck </em>Yeza Brenatto,” she says, “this isn’t a sex thing, I just want to see if you’ve…disinfected it or whatever, bandaged it up. And if he, if Yeza can’t handle that I’ve seen my best friend with his pants off, he, he…he shouldn’t be around me, is what I’m saying.”</p><p>“Oh, Veth<em>.</em>” <em>I love you</em>, he wants to say. <em>Not a romantic thing. This is too big, too all-encompassing, to be just about who I want to kiss. Veth, you are the strength and warmth seeping into my bones. Veth. I love you. </em></p><p>“Come on. Pants off, emo boy.”</p><p>“Veth!” But he does.</p><p>He knows when Veth has seen the burns when he hears her say, “Oh <em>Caleb.</em>” Her hands hover above his inner thigh, but do not touch. “Did you even disinfect these?”</p><p>“I washed them with soap?”</p><p>“Oh, there’s more…” She slides one fingertip up the neat row of burns, six healed ones and the three newly added burns. “Why?”</p><p><em>Why what</em>, he wants to ask, facetious, but.</p><p>“Mostly…control,” he says, finally. “And…an outlet. Of sorts. I can’t…the violence, it…” He  huffs a breath, grasping for the words. Veth waits, warm hand searing on his upper thigh. “The violence, I can’t, I can’t visit it on the man who—I can’t do it to him, I am a string bean, I’m nothing to him, so all this anger and violence I have, I curl it inwards. And I don’t want to hurt anyone else, so I hurt me. And. When I do it, Veth, it’s. It’s so beautiful, it’s like…it’s being calm again, it’s like I’m <em>empty.</em>”</p><p>“Isn’t being empty…bad?”</p><p>“Not if what you were full of before was rage and pain and grief.”</p><p>“Does it…have to be pain?” Veth asks, careful and confused. “Can’t you control something else? Or take up boxing for the violence? Or you can join archery club, you can control the bow and arrow and pretend the targets are your enemies…”</p><p>“I’m not actually that interested in exercise,” he reminds her wryly. “Nor do I have your upper arm strength.</p><p>“No, it’s…burning, Veth, it’s like.” He breathes in, out, in, out. “My parents, they. As you know. In a fire. And I.” He gestures to himself. “Alive. My parents are not.”</p><p>“So you’re…in a way, you’re…burning yourself? Because you survived a fire and they didn’t?”</p><p>“A little bit,” he says, “all those things, everything I said, all those reasons, all valid.”</p><p>Veth rises up, slow, and hugs him.</p><p>“I don’t understand it, Caleb,” she says, “but I sympathize with you. I’m so sorry. I’m here for you, I’m always going to be here for you, okay?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>“I’m gonna go get disinfectant and gauze from Beau,” she says, pressing a kiss to his earlobe. “And then I’m going to sleep over.”</p><p>“Do I have any say in this?”</p><p>“None whatsoever,” she says, half-laughing, and Caleb half-laughs back, even as self-loathing curls within his chest again. <em>What right do I have to Veth and Beau? What right have I to be loved, when I murdered the ones who loved me most…</em></p><p>She’s gone and back again within minutes, and quietly tells him that Dairon made strudel and she’d bring some up to them if they wanted. Also, Beau has pizza if he wants some.</p><p>Veth makes him lie down on the bed as she dabs disinfectant on the burns, apologizing for the sting. Caleb knows she wouldn’t be pleased to know that he <em>savors </em>the stinging, that the hurt delights him, so he says nothing; she binds up his upper thigh with white gauze and ties it off, and he thanks her. She skates her fingers across his face in response.</p><p>They eat pizza, they eat strudel, they do a little homework as the moon rises into the sky. Veth rummages in his cabinet for sleep-clothes and goes to shower in his bathroom. When she comes back, they settle into bed, Veth the little spoon.</p><p>“Caleb,” she says, voice low. Caleb, almost drifting off to sleep, jerks back awake.</p><p>“Ja?”</p><p>“Why did you answer Jester’s call and not ours, earlier?”</p><p>His brain scrambles to make sense of the words, but it’s late and he’s tired and full. He’s a little out of it as he replies, too-honest: “You and Beau love me. Jester does not care jack-shit about me. I am just her classmate and drama partner. I guess, at that moment…I needed that distance.”</p><p>“Of course Jester cares about you, Caleb, you’re her fucking friend.”</p><p>“She does not even know my real name, Veth.”</p><p>“<em>Caleb </em>is your real name,” his best friend says. “It’s your real name, if you want it to be. It’s on your paperwork and everything. You chose it, you’re living it, you’re going to go to college with it. You’re Caleb.”</p><p>He’s silent for a moment.</p><p>“Jester isn’t her real name either, you know,” Veth says, after a moment. “It’s a nickname.”</p><p>“I had thought that, yes.”</p><p>“But she changed it when we were kids and when she turns eighteen she’s gonna file paperwork to change it officially, I think.”</p><p>He hums in reply.</p><p>“What I’m saying is…you don’t know her real name either, and you care about her,” Veth says. “It’s not—none of this is in the <em>name</em>, Caleb.”</p><p>“In any case,” he says, deflecting, “I picked up Jester’s call because she does not love me like you and Beau do. It was…lower stakes. A little bit of distance.”</p><p>“Oh,” Veth says.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I thought…I don’t know. That maybe you were in the market for a better best friend.”</p><p>“<em>Veth the Brave Johnson.</em> I would never,” Caleb says, offended. He snakes an arm under her body and pulls her in tight like a teddy bear. “You are my best friend. <em>You</em>. There isn’t going to be anyone else, ever.” He pauses. “Unless Yeza would be angry…?”</p><p>“You’re my best friend, too, Caleb Widogast,” Veth says, equally offended. “If Yeza can’t handle that, then, then he can just…go find some other girl to gaze at longingly and not ask out!”</p><p>Caleb laughs; he can’t help it. He pushes his face into Veth’s back, shaking with mirth.</p><p>“Well, there are no girls or boys on the horizon for me right now,” he says, into the fabric of Veth’s stolen sleep-shirt. “But if there <em>were</em>, then I assure you that they too would have to put up with me and you being best friends, or they can find some other emo boy to date.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this chapter is brought to you by my intense love of widobrave in every shape or form. i am absolutely incapable of writing ANYTHING that does not incorporate that devotion.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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